


this could be a graveyard

by meanstoflourish



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Chloe Decker Being a Badass Mother, F/M, Kidnapped, Whump, post season 5a
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26967040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanstoflourish/pseuds/meanstoflourish
Summary: Chloe kneels on the dirty floor of the abandoned prison. Her daughter lies by her side, still unconscious. Fear suffocates her.The countdown behind them glows red. And if Lucifer doesn’t choose who to save, both of them will die.(or, Chloe and Trixie are kidnapped and the Devil can only help one.)
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Trixie Espinoza, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 16
Kudos: 83





	this could be a graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the angstiest of the prompts I've done for Whumptober. There was quite a bit of inspiration drawn from the Saw movies (and Lauren's Hostel). Sadly for Chloe Decker, I thought about it enough that I wrote it.

Chloe’s head pounds. 

_ Stomp, stomp, stomp.  _

Her mouth feels dry, as though stuffed with cotton, and her eyes hurt. It takes her one, two,  _ three _ tries before she’s able to open her eyes, and they don’t stay that way for long. 

_ Stomp, stomp. _

Something is pounding. Her head is killing her, a little drumbeat of pain behind her eyelids and on the back of her head. It feels like someone is walking on her skull in high heels. She’s not...sure what’s going on. She tries to remember, but it’s all blank.

Chloe groans as she forces her eyes open again, and finally takes notice of her surroundings.

She’s lying on a cold, cement floor. 

There’s nothing to her left but empty space. Her head feels too heavy to lift up, but little by little things begin to clear up. She was at home, watching Disney Channel and—

Trix... _ Trixie _ . She was with Trixie. 

She makes an effort to lift her head, and ends up dragging her forehead against the ground as she turns her head to her right. Her breath catches in her throat. 

Her daughter lies a few feet away from her, her face obscured from view by a mane of dark hair. 

The pain and confusion from before melt into a single point of panic. Anything can happen to her, but Trixie shouldn’t be here. 

Chloe tries to lift her head again, and realizes something—apart from the pain—is making it difficult.

She drags her hand up her body, her fingers slow and stupid. There’s a thick metal collar around her neck. It feels solid, heavy; and it’s connected to metal links.  _ She’s chained like a dog. _ Chloe blinks, trying to clear her blurry sight. 

_ Stomp, stomp, stomp.  _

The pounding from before comes back, and she finally recognizes it for what it is. Footsteps. She’s not alone here.

For a second, she thinks it’s Lucifer.

Her tired eyes zone in dark brown shoes, and then familiar long legs—but the gait is all wrong. 

_ Stomp, Stomp.  _

Realization bleeds into her like a poison. Fear, thick and suffocating, sets in. 

“Hey there. Are we awake?”

If the fact that she’s hurt and chained wasn’t enough for her muddled brain to clock into the fact that the man in this room isn’t her boyfriend, the accent does it. The slimy, odd american accent makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. 

“Well, hurry,” he says. “We don’t have all day.”

_ Michael.  _ Michael’s taken her again, and this time he took her daughter too. 

Rage is what drives her as she sits up with effort, her neck feeling the weight of the metal. She doesn’t need to look up, though, because the next second Michael is there, kneeling in front of her.

He looks  _ excited _ , and she’s once more surprised—and appalled at herself—that she could believe, even for a second, that he was Lucifer when he first showed up. Lucifer has a sparkle in his eye when he’s excited, not unlike a kid in a candy shop. His _ joie de vivre _ is contagious, and intoxicating.

Michael looks like a rabid dog who’s just been offered a raw steak. Like he’s excited to rip into her. 

“Come on Chloe, finish waking up, will you? I have a lot to tell you.” Michael stands up, and begins his pacing anew. 

A fresh wave of terror floods her veins as she sees Trixie’s prone form in the corner of her eye. She wishes she could muster up the strength to stand up, or to crawl towards her and protect her with her own body. 

She doesn’t care what Michael does to her, as long as her baby is okay.

“What…” She swallows through her parched throat. “What are you  _ doing _ ?”

Michael looks elated that she can finally put words together, and he stops his pacing to stand in front of her. He eyes her curiously, like she’s no more than a bug. Or a toy. 

_ Keep him focused on you, _ she tells herself, fighting through the layers of whatever drugs he must have dosed them with. 

Is that why Trixie hasn't woken up yet? Did he give them the same dose? Her daughter weighs 70 pounds wet, she could be overdosing right now— _ focus _ .  _ Focus _ , she tells herself.  _ You’re both dead if you don’t get your shit together.  _

She takes a deep breath, bringing forth all she knows about crisis management and de-escalation. She doesn’t know why the fuck he’s brought them here, but she has to believe he can be reasoned with. 

“Michael…”

“No,  _ I _ will do the talking. Allow me to explain what’s going on. Have you noticed the bling around you and your daughter’s necks?”

Chloe freezes. She feels the metal dig into her skin more keenly as she realizes that Trixie is wearing a matching one. She couldn’t see it before because her hair obscured it from view, but now, as she turns to look at her daughter, she notices a chain similar to her own connecting Trixie’s body to the other wall, across from her. What the fuck,  _ whatthefuck _ ?

“It’s a trap!” Michael says. “You see, there’s a razor inside the collars, positioned above your jugular vein.” 

Chloe’s heart stops. 

One of the few other women in her class in the police academy made her sit through a marathon of all the SAW movies. Chloe had been young, and desperately trying to fit in with the rest, and she’d said yes even though she wasn’t a fan of the genre. She remembers all the blood and guts, exactly the type of torture porn film that she never wanted to do when she was an actress.

She remembers how she felt a certain sense of peace, too, knowing that even in the worst serial killer cases stuff like that was unheard of. Possible but highly unlikely. The intersection of having enough money and intelligence to build that shit, and yet being unhinged enough to actually go through with it...It was just a movie. 

No human being would actually put together death machines like that.

Not a human being, but maybe an angel?

“Ah, sinking in what this all means, is it?” Michael asks.

Chloe swallows through the rising nausea, and forces herself to think like a cop. She stops fiddling with the collar, stops touching it altogether just in case it might set off the mechanism. She’ll tell Trixie to do the same and stay calm when she wakes up, because she  _ will _ wake up.

There’s no world for her if Trixie is gone. 

No way for her to keep a clear head and not succumb to grief if her baby is hurt, so she’s operating under the assumption that Trixie’s asleep, still heavily drugged because of course a fucking deranged angel wouldn’t know or care to administer a different dose of tranquilizers to a child. 

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, her voice stronger than she feels.

Panic has given way to a feeling of steely, forced calm. She’s almost detached, and she needs that. She needs to think. De-escalate. 

They could die. This isn’t Michael locking her in an abandoned zoo to punish Lucifer. This isn’t him playing mind games with her fears while also bringing her coffee. This is beyond that. He intends to hurt his brother, and to hurt her to accomplish that, and Trixie’s gotten mixed up in all of this and that’s fucking  _ unthinkable _ . 

“If you try to open the collar…” Michael continues, stepping right over her questions like it’s nothing. “Well, that wouldn’t end well.” He points towards Trixie, and then drags his thumb across his throat while a moan gurgles up from his throat. 

Chloe has the urge to throw up, and she swallows it down. 

_ What the fuck?  _ It becomes a mantra inside her head as she struggles to come to terms with the situation she’s in. What in the fucking hell is happening?

“I mean, you could go ahead and do that. You can always have another kid. Your kind breeds like rabbits,” Michael states. “But just so you’re aware, if you rip open your collar, you’ll activate hers. If she rips open hers, she’ll activate yours.”

Chloe breaths in through her nose, and out through her mouth.

“Hmm, have you been a good mother Chloe?” Michael asks, oblivious to the steady stream of tears that begin to fall from her eyes. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. “The girl might just decide to get it over with herself!”

He’s trying to get a rise out of her, and he won’t accomplish that. She’s past his goading and manipulations. Her daughter’s life is on the line here. That alone makes her focus lazer-like, even as her body reacts to the stress with tears she can’t control. 

Michael got to her, back in the cave, because she was alone, and free, and she was almost sure he wouldn’t physically hurt her. Here, he could show her livestream footage of Lucifer cheating on her with the entire Circe-du-Soleil and she wouldn’t even blink. 

Nothing matters apart from Trixie. 

Whatever he gave her is clearing up, and she becomes aware of more and more of her surroundings. They’re in a large, bare room. It almost looks like a highschool cafeteria, but it’s clearly unused. All the surfaces—including the floor she’s slumped over—seem to be covered by a thick layer of dust.

Somewhere abandoned, then. An old school? No, too close to civilization. She can’t hear anything at all, it’s clear they’re not in the city. A private university somewhere? No. 

She looks around. There are marks on the ground where chairs and tables used to be bolted to the floor. This is a prison. 

They’re in an abandoned prison in the middle of fucking nowhere. 

“Chloe, it’s rude not to pay attention when someone else is speaking. I’m sure you’ve taught your daughter that. Don’t you want to set a good example?”

He looks at Trixie for the first time, and Chloe wants to claw his eyes out. Her eyes are glued to her daughter, and she notices movement, faint but there. 

She’s waking up, she’s  _ okay _ .

Relief is sudden and debilitating. A fresh drink of water after walking through a dessert.

She looks up at Michael. He seems pleased she’s apparently following orders. 

“As I was saying...You open it, she bites it, she opens it, you kick the bucket. Got it?”

She looks at the chains connecting Trixie and herself to the wall. They’re thick, but Lucifer could rip them like weeds. Maybe she could try herself, with enough time and something heavy…

“Now, don’t get smart Detective. If you rip any chain from the wall you’ll activate both collars.”

Fuck. Is this even real? She looks at Trixie, and knows that she can’t risk it. She has to treat his every word like the truth, because there’s no room for mistakes. 

Chloe looks up at him, trying to suss out what’s his game. 

He wants to hurt Lucifer, that much is clear. He probably resents her as well, if his attitude during their so called “Family Dinner” is anything to go by. He probably took Trixie as a calculated move too, not just because she was in the way. He had far too many chances to take her alone. 

Whatever sick game he’s playing, they’re both a part of it. 

Chloe breathes in through her nose, and out through her mouth. She just needs to make enough time, they need to hang in there until Lucifer arrives with the cavalry.

He’s gotten smarter about that, since the last time she was kidnapped—by the same dick standing in front of her. Lucifer will be working with the cops. They’ll get here, and Amenadiel will help him with Michael. And then Ella can find a way to disable the collars. 

She can’t free herself or Trixie without hurting either of them, so she needs to wait and hold on. It’s the best plan she can come up with. 

“Why are you doing this?” she asks him. “Talk to me, at least let me know.” 

_ Empathy. _ De-escalation tips circle her brain like frantic flies. If it won’t get Michael to desist, at least it’ll buy them time. 

“Oh no, you’re not distracting me so easily. Also, I’m not done. The real show begins when my brother gets here. The minute he barges through those doors, and you know he will, the timer will start.”

Fear sets her body ablaze once again, suffocates her. She looks around, but she can’t see anything. 

“My bad!” Michael exclaims, and then walks to a corner of the room behind her. She gets up on all fours and follows him with her eyes. He opens up a beat up laptop, and the screen flickers to life. Large, red zeros fill the entire screen. 

It’s a bad joke. She feels like she’s in a horrible, badly written movie. How is a timer like that even  _ real _ ? 

“I’m going to be long gone by the time my brother gets here, and I’m going to rig every entrance to this place before I go. So when he walks in, he’ll have unknowingly started the countdown that will end your life.” Michael stands tall, his plan finally out in the open. “Or the child’s, I guess. We both know he doesn’t care about her, all he cares about is you. But if he saves you and kills your child, you’ll never forgive him. But if you get him to save her, he’ll lose you anyway. I believe that’s what you call a Catch-22, yeah?”

Alarm bells ring in Chloe’s ears, a horrible, dawning reality just out of reach from her understanding—her brain protecting itself. 

“Because that’s the thing Chloe. You get 10 minutes, that’s all. And if the timer reaches 0 and he hasn’t made his choice on who to save, you’ll both die. He  _ will  _ have to choose.” He looks at Trixie, and then looks back at her. “And only one of you is walking out here alive.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you are concerned about possible triggers moving forward, you can contact me on twitter @meanstoflourish. Promise there's a positive ending.
> 
> This is my 2nd fic for the Lucifer fandom! This fic was a long one-shot, and I decided to divide it into chapters for ease of reading. Let me know what you thought, I'd really like to read your comments.


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